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Products that Changed Computing

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Have you ever imagined what it would be like if you couldn’t

share that laser printer? Or if



    there was no mouse or browser to let you surf the Internet?

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Every now and then, we have a new product that changes

everything in its wake, and computing is never the same again. Which are the 20 most

significant products–in hardware and software–that have happened to computing?

Here’s our list (in alphabetical order) of 10 each in the two categories.



Hardware





CD-ROMs



Ever tried installing Win 95 from the 15 floppies that it used to come in? And what if the

fourteenth turned out to be corrupt? We aren’t talking nonsense. Ask any old-timer

and they’d have a hundred such horror stories to recount. The floppy, like its name

indicates, is a fragile medium. And the bloat that became the regular feature of

applications was something the floppy just couldn’t cope with.



Rescue came in the form of the CD-ROM. Surprisingly, the CD-ROM wasn’t even meant for
distributing software. It was developed in 1980 by Philips and Sony for music storage. The

74 minutes of music that the disk could hold converted to approximately 650 MB of data,

and proved to be a Godsend for the software industry. The CD-ROM first appeared as a

software medium in 1983. The hunt for the next killer storage media is on, but for now,

CD-ROMs are the preferred choice.




Ethernet cards



Today, a network is a must, particularly if you’re in an office. And

more often than not, it’s an Ethernet network. With technologies like ATM and FDDI

being restricted to the backbones or to specialized networks that require high bandwidths,

Ethernet is today the only option that spans the entire spectrum– covering small,

medium, and even large networks.

Ethernet is so named after Ether–the medium that was

once thought to propagate electromagnetic waves through space. Though the existence of

Ether had been disproved, Bob Metcalfe–the inventor of Ethernet named it so, to

signify that it could carry signals to all types of computers. This is something Ethernet

does with consummate ease even today. In keeping with the times, it’s grown from

transfer rates of 10 Mbps to 100 Mpbs and now, with the advent of the Gigabit

Ethernet–to 1,000 Mbps. Without Ethernet, the connected world would surely have been

a different place today.

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Macintosh



Sure, the PC changed the world. But for years, it played catch-up to

another machine–the Macintosh.



The Mac–as it’s fondly called–was launched by Apple in 1984, and soon
became a cult figure. Its single USP throughout has been ease of use, which is best

exemplified by the GUI (Graphical User Interface) and the mouse, both of which the Mac

sported many years before the PC. And it had plug-and-play, way before the PC got to

plug-and-pray!

Unfortunately for the Mac, it always remained a fringe

system, thanks to the closed-door policies of Apple. Unlike the IBM PC clone, there never

was a Mac clone. Even when cloning was finally allowed, the plug was pulled soon enough.

All said, however, the Mac did have a tremendous impact on

personal computing, as it went through innovations for the PC to catch up with. Even with

the current-day iMac and iBook, the story remains the same.

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Modems



Man has always been a communicating animal. Some of the greatest

inventions of all time, including the telephone and the television, have risen out of his

need to communicate across vast distances. Playing the role of the telephone in the cyber

world is the modem.

Starting off with the now-lowly 300 bps

“modulator-demodulator”, the modem’s come a long way indeed in connecting

up the world–first through bulletin boards and now through the Internet. As connect

speeds increased, so did the varieties and technologies of modems available, all the way

up to DSL.



In the connected future, there’s no doubt that the modem will in one form or the
other, continue to play its vital role in linking mankind together.

Mouse



The mouse certainly gets the votes of all those who hate striking their

fingers on the keyboard for anything except typing. And the mouse did just that, by making

everything “just a click away”. From minimizing a window to surfing the Web, you

can do it all with a click, thanks to the mouse. The mouse too has come a long

way–with one, two, and then three buttons, rollers, and the most recent cordless

mice.

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So, who invented the mouse? Douglas C Engelbart

demonstrated the “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System” way back in 1968.

The mouse had to wait for 16 long years before finding widespread application in the

Macintosh. Today, you can’t even think of a computer without a mouse of some sort.



Truly, one of the inventions that redefined computing.

PC



Today, the terms PC and computer are used interchangeably. That in effect,

sums up the impact that the original IBM PCs had on computing.

The original IBM PC was also the first computer to be built

on an open architecture, letting others to add features to the machine by way of add-on

cards. This architecture is one of the reasons why it became so popular, and more

importantly, laid the foundation for a multi-multi-billion-dollar industry. The world was

never quite the same again after the first PC was introduced in 1981.

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Printers



Affordable printing came our way with the dot matrix printer. Quality got

added to affordability with the laser. We’ve combined both here into one

class–Printers. Did we miss out the inkjet? Not quite. Impact- wise, the DMPs and the

laser printers are more significant. The inkjet is yet to realize its full potential and

is well-poised to be the printer of choice in the future.

Dot matrix printers



The first DMP to make its appearance was the Epson EP101–the first

mini-printer to be launched– in 1968. DMPs became an incredible success, with their

low per-page cost of printing and the ability to print multiple forms. The downside was

quality, and color. There was only so much that the DMP could do on both fronts. With the

advent of the low-cost laser and inkjet, pundits predicted the demise of the

DMP. But it

refuses to die in this country. It could live on well into the new millennium, in the many

accounts departments and banks, and even shops with their POS terminals.

Laser printers



Long before inkjets offered breathtaking color to sweep users off their

feet, the laser printer set the standard in print quality. Sharp prints without visible

jagged lines was just one of their USPs. The other was quiet operation. To a generation

used to the high-pitched chattering of the DMP, the quiet laser was a welcome relief. And

unlike the DMP, the laser soon acquired the ability to get plugged on to your network.

Today, the laser printer has changed the face of corporate printing, and is the de facto

choice for large-volume corporate printing.

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Sound Blaster



Most PCs today come with built-in sound. And the circuitry that produces

this sound invariably claims Sound Blaster compatibility. It’s the Sound Blaster card

that made multimedia possible and affordable on the PC. The early multimedia kits from

Creative–incorporating a sound card, a CD-ROM drive, and a pair of speakers–were

hot sellers, as PC users raced to extend their machines into the new frontier of

multimedia. In fact, for a couple of years, multimedia (represented by a CD-ROM drive, a

sound card and two speakers) was considered to be the prime driver of computing,

particularly for the home market.



Today, sound capability is beginning to be built into the motherboard and the chipset
itself, and soon, sound cards as a separate product may vanish altogether. But the Sound

Blaster will have a special place in personal computing history for having ushered in the

age of affordable multimedia.

Tape storage



If you happen to see photographs of old mainframes, what’ll strike

you will be the spools of tape loaded on them. The visual prominence is indeed matched by

reality. Tape storage has had a very critical role to play in computing, almost from the

very beginning. Consider this. Before the advent of tape, the option was paper! Remember

the punched cards and the paper tapes that computers and calculators of yesteryears used?

One of the disadvantages of tape is that it’s a

sequential access technology, and is therefore slow. But when it comes to taking backups,

this works to the advantage of tape-based devices, as you’re not looking for

split-second responses. Also, the compact nature of tape makes it possible to store very

large volumes of data in very little physical space.

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Today, tape-based backup devices support the entire

spectrum of computers from desktop computers to enterprise application servers and

mainframes. Like good wine, tape technology has also improved with the passage of time,

and as yet there’s nothing on the horizon that can replace tape as the preferred

option for mass storage and backup.

Software

C++



First, there was programming. Then came structured programming. And then,

with C++, came object oriented programming. Today, all mainstream languages implement the

object-oriented way of writing code. To put it very simply, you associate actions to

objects. These objects, once created are reusable across projects. So, as is obvious, one

of the primary advantages of this method is that time required for writing code comes down

drastically.

Like with many other categories, C++ was by no means the

first object oriented programming language. There was Simula and Smalltalk before it. But

neither of them caught the imagination of programmers or vendors like C++ did. C++ was

written by Bjarn Stroustrup in 1983, and has attracted an increasing number of adherents

since then.

Java



When compiled programs seemed to have firmly established their ascendancy

over slow interpreters, Java bucked the trend and went back to the days of interpreted

languages. But simultaneously, Java also bucked the trend of writing platform-specific

code and then going through the laborious process of porting it to other platforms. It

held out the promise of code that could run on any platform, without any changes

whatsoever. To the programming community still coming to grips with the profusion of OSs

on the Net, Java was indeed a godsend.

So far, mainstream software created in Java has been on the

rarer side. Also, the much-touted Java chips haven’t yet delivered their potential.

But still, any operating system worth its name includes a Java virtual machine, and Java

is often the preferred tool for the Internet and the intranet. Java has indeed changed the

way programming for the Net has evolved.

Lotus 1-2-3



When the PC first came out, it was nothing more than a potential killer

device waiting for the killer application—the application that would prove to the

world its true potential, the application without which the PC would never have become the

PC as we know it today. That killer application turned out to be Lotus 1-2-3. The

“1-2-3” in the name stands for the three applications that were built into the

product—namely spreadsheet, graphing, and database. It was programmed by Jonathan

Sachs, and Mitch Kapor was the software designer.

Making its debut in 1983, two years after the advent of the

PC, 1-2-3 proved that the PC could have more to it than the calculators that were its

predecessor. For many years, 1-2-3, and Lotus ruled the roost. In fact, Lotus in those

days was a major force to reckon with, as is evidenced by the LIM (Lotus-Intel-Microsoft)

specifications on expanded memory.

Netscape Navigator



Mosaic was the first Web browser to provide a graphical front-end for

browsing the Internet. But Netscape is solely responsible for making the first millions

hook on to the World Wide Web. Netscape started to add new features to the browser at such

a furious pace that Mosaic was soon left far behind. But then, being a university product,

it’s also not right to expect such a frantic pace of innovation from Mosaic. Anyway,

for a long time, Netscape Navigator, as it was known then (it became the Communicator

subsequently, with Navigator being one of the components) was the only Web browser that

was available to users, although they had to pay for it.

Later, as it faced competition from IE, Navigator also

became free, and still later, even the source code was made open. Navigator may wither

away in future, or become a minor browser in the larger game. But no-one can deny its

rightful place in computing history—as the browser that opened the floodgates to the

Internet.

Operating systems



Even the novices among us know that computers need operating systems to

run. There’s no doubt that what operating systems can or can’t do, has to a

large extent defined what computers themselves could achieve. Mac aficionados will notice

that we’ve left out the MacOS here. The MacOS was no doubt a revolutionary product,

but it’s so tightly bound to the Macintosh that any mention here would be a

repetition of what we’ve said earlier about the Mac.

Linux



A variant of Unix, Linux has been a joint effort of developers worldwide,

who over a decade, built up a lean and sturdy OS that can take on the best that commercial

vendors have to offer. Linux’s claim to fame is that it fueled a new paradigm in

software development and distribution—the now-widespread Open Source movement.

Today, Linux poses a significant challenge to all other

operating systems, both on the server and on the desktop. One of the reasons why it’s

able to throw an across-the-board challenge is that it’s been ported to almost all

hardware platforms available, including the latest as well as the most esoteric.

NetWare



Novell’s NetWare made networking what it is today, particularly in

small to medium-sized companies. A robust operating system, NetWare made it possible to

use cheap Intel-based servers instead of the costly RISC ones demanded by Unix. To those

not well-versed in the inner workings of Unix, the advent of NDS (Novell Directory

Services) made managing networks easier than it was ever before. In fact, till recently,

NetWare was about the only choice for a network server OS, other than Unix.

Later, NetWare yielded its leading position in this segment

to Win NT, but it still continues to be a significant enough presence in most networks.

Unix



Developed by Bell Labs in the early 1970s, Unix has since then split up

into a number of variants, and nobody’s sure about how many exist or what their

current status is. Most variants of Unix evolved as sturdy operating systems for

servers—particularly high-end ones—and workstations.



The Nerd’s favorite operating system, Unix’s most significant claim to fame is
that the Internet is mostly Unix-like, with many Unix features like TCP/IP and e-mail

becoming standards on the Net. This can be directly attributed to the fact that the

Internet initially was built solely around Unix machines.

Windows



When we talk of Windows, we normally mean Windows for the personal

desktop, currently Win 98. But there are many other versions too. There’s the server

version—Win NT, with its next version to be called Windows 2000. There’s Win NT

workstation for commercial desktops, and there’s Windows CE for hand-held devices. An

embedded version has apparently on the cards.

On the desktop, Windows has had dominant mind and market

share, while on the server, it has become a potent force comparatively recently. In the

hand-held market, Windows has had to play second fiddle to the Palm OS.

PKZip



The “PK” in PKZip stands for Phillip Katz, the author of the

program. PKZip was by no means the first compression utility. But when it was released in

1989, it soon became the most widely-used compression program. The zip format that’s

become the standard in compressing files comes from PKZip. PKZip owes its popularity to

Katz’s decision to make his software widely available by distributing it as

shareware.

PKZip missed the Windows bandwagon, with a Windows version

coming out quite late in the day. By then, however, WinZip had become the standard file

compression utility on Windows. However, PKZip led the way in helping us conserve valuable

hard disk real estate in the face of ever-burgeoning file sizes.

Visual Basic



Visual Basic brought simplicity and elegance to programming. It completely

hid the rigors of programming behind drag-and-drop elements and thus enabled absolute

newbies to create professional-looking, feature-rich applications. That’s exactly

what Visual Basic was supposed to do. Created by Microsoft with the express mandate of

making programming for Windows easier, Visual Basic has succeeded in doing exactly that.

Hardcore coders love to hate Visual Basic and shrug it off

as good only for creating front-ends. But today, even they’re mixing and matching VB

with their favorite VC++ and Delphi, as they go about creating their next masterpiece.



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